UN says by 2030 half world’s people will live in high water stress areas

The United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs believes that by 2025, ‘absolute water scarcity’ will affect 1.8 billion people in rural regions.
Photo: Michele Mossop

by
Olga Galacho

Innovations to solve water shortages around the globe will challenge some traditional assumptions.

For instance, Melbourne futurist Marcus Barber has proposed an international currency dubbed the Global, which would be equal to one litre of fresh (non-drinkable) water.

In his paper No Mere Drop in the Ocean, he surmised that water should become a valuable and tradeable currency rather than a mere commodity, motivating consumers to use it very wisely.

Water and arable land scarcity have prompted some Chinese entrepreneurs to design giant farm ships using decom­missioned aircraft carriers as a sort of floating crop field.

Equipped with renewable energy generators and rain collection and desalination capabilities, the ships would sail to climates that were conducive to food production, avoiding drought and floods, and then sail back to port at harvest time.

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Just how severe water scarcity will be by the end of this century depends on which expert is talking. On the one hand there are the hydrology alarmists who say that in just over 10 years, two-thirds of the world’s population will be living with water stress.

The United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs believes that by 2025, “absolute water scarcity" will affect 1.8 billion people in rural regions.

“With the existing climate change scenario, almost half the world’s population will be living in areas of high water stress by 2030, including between 75 million and 250 million people in Africa," the UN says.

Water techs say they can make enough

On the other hand, water technology industries do not believe the planet is ever going to run out of water to sustain even an exploding population, decades from now.

There is enough fresh water to support 6 billion humans and much more in the oceans that can be made potable with desalination, according to those with the ­technical solutions.

Dr Bill Young, who leads the Com­monwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO ) Water for a Healthy Country Flagship, says Australians are one of the biggest per capita users of water on the planet.

“We’ve got a lot of water – this is a big country. But the majority of our water is used for producing food, two-thirds of which is exported to feed the rest of the world," Dr Young says.

He argues that as developing nations urbanise, demand will soar for food, especially for meat and dairy goods, whose producers are the biggest guzzlers of water. “But what we are seeing with the Murray-Darling [rivers] debate is a reflection of people’s changing views of what water sustainability looks like; what’s an acceptable level of environmental impact for the services and benefits we enjoy from the productive capacity of water," Dr Young says.

The CSIRO flagship promotes building more water storage capacity, efficiency and recycling as solutions.

“We need to explore how we can recover the energy and nutrients contained in water we have used.

“Increasingly, the technology we have is allowing us to recover that in a cost-effective way," he says.

Desalination debate

On desalination, Dr Young is more circumspect. “It’s okay in crisis times, but desalination is not a solution for irrigation because it is too expensive."

Water technology companies beg to differ.

The Australian chief executive of global engineering firm Siemens, Jeff Connolly, believes there is “no room for complacency just because our dams have filled up with rain".

“During the recent extended drought periods, Australia was in a difficult situation until investments in innovation and water infrastructure began," Connolly says.

“The megatrends of climate change, ­urbanisation and population growth will ­continue over the next 100 years and we will need more water.

“Recent investments in desalination have provided a level of water security that we sometimes don’t appreciate."

Siemens infrastructure components help treat and deliver pure drinking water to nearly every Australian and clean up waste water for the nation’s biggest industries.

In the future, Siemens believes interconnected software systems could manage all water usage across the country. “I think one of the things we’re really only exploring today that will become mainstream beyond 2030 is smart water grids," Connolly says.

“I can see a time when national demand and supply of water is managed using a network of remote metering and monitoring systems.

“If we apply the same developments to our catchments, we will reach a point where crop water use can be fully automated by satellite navigation and field sensors and controls."

Such predictive models would allow pre-emptive distribution from multiple sources, to make sure water is available where and when it is needed.

GE
believes Australians need to get over feeling queasy when they think of re-using recycled water.

During the drought years, governments pledged billions in new investment but the “ick" factor was widely cited for assigning water recycling a lower priority than desalination, GE Australia water spokesperson
Ish Hakim
says.

Yet in places such as China, Singapore and even the United States, there is strong support for utilities, large industries and agriculture to take the lead in water re-use.

In a recent GE survey of 3000 people in those countries, most said they were more likely to support organisations that recycled water over those that did not.

“GE sees water re-use as a critical resource that Australia could literally tap into much more," Mr Hakim says.

“We are delivering the advanced technology to efficiently treat, recycle and reuse water, such as sewage.’’

In some countries innovative ways of funnelling human waste water back into the food chain are becoming mainstream.

In Singapore, GE’s filtration technology is being used to convert waste from sewers into drinking water, reducing the island nation’s reliance on water imports.

In Israel, which produces enough sewage a year to fill 200,000 Olympic-size swimming pools, GE has invested in a plant that uses fast-acting bacteria in high-tech membranes to turn human effluent into irrigation water.

On a smaller scale, Sydney’s Pennant Hills Golf Club has a sewage treatment plant on the course that has helped cut its potable water use by more than 92 per cent.

The plant “mines" a sewer that runs through the course and uses the treated water to keep the fairways sparkling green.

It is progress, but GE believes Australian policymakers need to do more to encourage communities to accept re-used waste water.

“We are a nation of drought and flooding rains and we should pick from the full menu of options,’’ Mr Hakim says.